Bill and Hillary are reportedly using tax advantaged strategies used by multimillionaires. Bill and Hillary Clinton are finding their way around an estate tax they have long supported, a cause they said would prevent the U.S. from being overrun by inherited wealth. The Clintons are employing a series of financial planning strategies that will help reduce the tax burden on future recipients, which can be as high as 40%, Bloomberg News reported.

If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times since Obama was elected – that every problem he faced as president was inherited from Bush. From Bush’s wars to Bush’s recession, every problem in America, and around the world for that matter, was all Bush’s fault. Well, what goes around comes around, and as the presidential campaign season heats up, the big question that needs to be answered by the Democratic presidential nominee will be: What problems will they be “inheriting” from Obama? For the fun of it, let’s assume Hillary wins the Democratic nomination. Just how will...

Is inherited wealth making a comeback? Yes, says Thomas Piketty, author of the best seller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” Inherited wealth has always been with us, of course, but Mr. Piketty believes that its importance is increasing. He sees a future that combines slow economic growth with high returns to capital. He reasons that if capital owners save much of their income, their wealth will accumulate and be passed on to their heirs. He concludes that individuals’ living standards will be determined less by their skill and effort and more by bequests they receive. To be sure, one can...

My mother and her sister inherited a substantial amount of land from my grandparents. My sister, her husband, my mother, my aunt, two of her sons, and I met with the attorneys last Friday. Despite my voiced disagreement, it was decided to pursue a "conservation easement" for the mountain land. My mother has been trying to divide the property with her sister for over 20 years, since my grandmother's death.

No inheritance for Anderson! CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who comes from the Vanderbilts, one of the wealthiest families in American history, said Monday, March 31, that he will not be receiving any fortune from his mother Gloria Vanderbilt. "My mom's made clear to me that there's no trust fund," Cooper told Howard Stern on his radio show. "There's none of that." Cooper's mom is the great-great-granddaughter of railroad and shipping mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt. Still stunning at 90 years old, the Manhattan socialite and former denim designer is reportedly worth a whopping $200 million. Gloria's equally-successful son, however, told Stern he...

Islamic law is adopted by British legal chiefs Solicitors told how to draw up Sharia-style wills penalising widows and non-believers By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor 9:35PM GMT 22 Mar 2014 Islamic law is to be effectively enshrined in the British legal system for the first time under guidelines for solicitors on drawing up “Sharia compliant” wills. Under ground-breaking guidance, produced by The Law Society, High Street solicitors will be able to write Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether. The documents, which would be recognised by Britain’s courts, will also prevent children...

Speaking on stage yesterday at the TED 2014 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Bill and Melinda Gates gave a revealing answer to a question about how they're raising their kids with respect to money, reports Wired. The couple has enough money to make each of their three children billionaires if they should want to do so, but as they answered, that's not the plan at all. "We want to strike a balance so they have the freedom to do anything, but not sort of a lot of money showered on them so that they can go out and do nothing,"...

The roots of inheritance may extend beyond the genome, but the mechanisms remain a puzzle. When Brian Dias became a father last October, he was, like any new parent, mindful of the enormous responsibility that lay before him. From that moment on, every choice he made could affect his newborn son's physical and psychological development. But, unlike most new parents, Dias was also aware of the influence of his past experiences — not to mention those of his parents, his grandparents and beyond. Where one's ancestors lived, or how much they valued education, can clearly have effects that pass down...

The number of Americans owning pets is at a record high, and more people are making provisions in their wills to provide for these animals after they're gone. But to ensure your pet is cared for as you intend, it's important to set up a pet trust—an arrangement that 46 states permit. "Pet trusts aren't just for the wealthy," says Frances Carlisle, a trust and estates attorney in New York. For most pet owners, she adds, the goal "is to make sure a plan exists for the care of the animal." Pet trusts can take effect either after you die...

They Are Going To Make It Nearly Impossible To Pass On A Farm Or A Business To Your Children By Michael Snyder on November 20th, 2012 If you have a farm or a small business, would you like to pass it on to your children when you die? Well, unless Congress does something, it is going to become much, much harder to do that starting next year. Right now, there is a 5 million dollar estate tax exemption and anything above that is taxed at 35 percent. But on January 1st, the exemption will go down to 1 million dollars...

Baby boomers: Get ready for a double whammy. For years now, there's been a lot of talk about boomers getting tremendous windfalls as their parents pass on. Many boomers, in fact, have been lagging behind in their savings, betting on—hoping for—big bequests, especially since many of them suffered big losses in 2008. But for a growing number of boomers, things aren't going according to plan. The postwar generation is living longer—and many are spending their savings along the way. And, of course, many of them also took a hit in 2008. The result is that, as a group, boomers likely...

Is no age group safe from the fiscal woes of economic near-recession and pending entitlement crises? (Hint: No.) While we often focus on the troubles of young people unable to find employment and just chillin' on the parents' couches, and we're already well aware of the upcoming squeeze on Social Security as baby boomers begin to reach retirement age, here's a fun and exciting reminder from the Wall Street Journal. For years now, there's been a lot of talk about boomers getting tremendous windfalls as their parents pass on. Many boomers, in fact, have been lagging behind in their savings,...

Rags to riches tale of kitty who went from living on the streets to lap of luxury once down-on-his-luck stray cat has become the world’s richest kitty — thanks to a childless widow who left him $8.5 million in her will. Tommaso the black cat, who once scoured the streets of Rome for food, can now afford a gilded litter box with the inheritance. In a handwritten will penned shortly before her death last month, Maria Assunta, 94, ordered that the money from her real estate empire should keep the green-eyed feline she rescued in the lap of luxury. Animals...

Time magazine columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria says Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” tax reform plan is “sloppy and, in parts, bizarre.” So he offered his own version of a tax reform plan in his weekly column in Time. In it, Zakaria argues that Americans should give the federal government half of what they inherit. “I would enact a 50 percent inheritance tax, because nothing is more un-American than an inherited elite that perpetuates itself,” Zakaria wrote for the magazine.

I’ve written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of “wealth redistribution” that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles—producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance. Happily, not all billionaires are content to hoard their money in silence. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized our current approach to raising revenue. As he has lamented many...

Bottom Line (last few paragraphs): Where the Great luxury-devouring Whore Jerusalem had failed, Jesus instructs his disciples to succeed. Instead of selling yourself to the kings of the earth, uphold the kingdom of God to them as a witness. Instead of striving after the treasures as if they were an end in themselves, use the treasures as a means to strive for the Kingdom. And toward this goal of spreading the kingdom—the very goal for which the original covenant called—God would be absolutely pleased to give them treasures and the kingdom. Based on the continuity of themes—wealth, kingdom, inheritance—Jesus’ teaching...

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.(Romans 8:14-17)Christians are Sons of God. Not naturally, but by adoption, God has brought us into his own family,and given us the status of sons. Also by virtue of a new birth, having been born from above, we share in the Divine nature,and are Sons of God. John 1:12-13 brings out this twofold truth powerfully when he proclaims , *adoption,“As...

MUMBAI: If ever there is anything like a good year to die in, it is 2010 — but only if you are a millionaire US citizen. America’s ‘death tax’, which was repealed in 2010, is set to be introduced in the new year. Formally called the Estate Tax, it is levied on inheritance before it is passed on from one generation to the next. The tax was introduced in 1916 and has been in force ever since. The brief window in 2010 was the only exception, making it a freak year in which death carried a huge tax break. Under...

Mr. Frank's attitude seems to be that Americans need to justify why they should keep the money they inherit instead of the government needing to justify why they should be allowed to confiscate it. Video at link.

Grateful to have found work in this tough economy, Nick Martin teaches grape growing and winemaking each Saturday to a class of seven students in a simple metal building here at a satellite campus of Highland Community College. Then he drives 14 miles in an 11-year-old Ford Explorer to a sparsely furnished tract house that he rents for $900 a month on a dead-end street in McFarland, a smaller town. Just across the backyard is a shed that a neighbor uses to make cartridges for shooting the prairie dogs that infest the adjacent fields. It is a far cry from...

...Eccentric siblings Ethel Willson and Mabel Cook, described as like 'peas in a pod', drew up a joint will in 1991 leaving their possessions to their family and friends. Mrs Cook died aged 83 in 1995, but in 2006 her younger sister dramatically changed the will, just two months before her own death aged 92, leaving all but £10,000 of the estate to their hairdresser Jill Fraser. Now a High Court judge has ruled that because the sisters had a mutual agreement before Mrs Cook died, the original will should be honoured. The mutual wills drawn up in 1991 carved...

"...taxpayers don’t want the IRS to confiscate huge portions of what has been saved and invested over lifetimes of hard work. “You don’t know whether to commit suicide or just go on living and working,” says Eugene Sukup, an outspoken critic of the estate tax and the founder of Sukup Manufacturing, a maker of grain bins that employs 450 people in Sheffield, Iowa. Born in Nebraska during the Dust Bowl, the 81-year-old Mr. Sukup is a National Guard veteran and high school graduate who founded his firm, which now owns more than 70 patents, with $15,000 in 1963. He says...

I have a friend who stands to inherit a small amount of money that was left to her by a relative. Question is, the executor of the estate isn't communicating with her at all (last spoke on March 9th) and she's not sure what's going on. The trust was set up in May 2009. The relative passed away last July. The executor tells her there "might be" a certain length of time that has to pass before the trust fund can be liquidated. It seems like the executor was being deliberately vague, but assuming this length of time is a...

Fiscal Policy: The new year saw the death of the estate tax. But like Freddie Krueger, this epitome of class warfare and wealth redistribution is sure to return to wreak havoc among the living. Once dubbed the "Paris Hilton" tax, the levy is supposed to target the inherited wealth of the super-rich who really didn't earn it or don't really need so much of it. Or so we're told. But at some point, even inherited wealth was created and taxed in its creation. The death tax is double taxation, and just because you can't take it with you doesn't mean...

An investigation into e-mails that seemed to have disappeared from the Bush White House has resulted in restoration of 22 million of the missing messages and a deal to uncover what could be millions of other e-mails that allegedly fell through cracks in the archiving system, two nonprofit groups said Monday. However, an untold number of official e-mails from President George W. Bush's era will probably never be recovered because it would be extremely costly to do so, lawyers involved in lawsuits brought by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said. "While we have...

Swedish crime novelist Stieg Larsson left no will when he died five years ago, so everything passed to his father and brother. His companion of 30 years, whom he never married, got nothing. Reporting from Stockholm - Not even Stieg Larsson could've dreamed up "The Girl Who Fought for a Share of the Inheritance." But five years after his untimely death and millions of book sales later, the Swedish crime writer's estate is caught in a bitter feud worthy of one of his thrillers, complete with a strong-willed female protagonist, a murky bog of possible villains and a plot that...

What stopped Darwin discovering the laws of inheritance? Darwin devoted a large part of his life to understanding heredity. He wrote books on the subject. However, his views fluctuated with time, and historians have spent much time analysing the different ideas he entertained. "Darwin's conclusion from his studies on inheritance was always the same, that the rules and mechanisms of inheritance were complex and not ready for a definitive analysis." Darwin's conceptual model of evolution meant his experiments on inheritance were quite different from those of Mendel (source here)In a helpful analysis of the issues, Jonathan Howard of the University...

Darwinists Topple Darwin’s Tree of Life Darwin’s “Tree of Life” is a myth. It’s based on circular reasoning. It is a pattern imposed on the data, not a fact emerging from the evidence. We should give up the search for a single tree of life (TOL) as a record of the history of life on earth, because it is a “quixotic pursuit” unlikely to succeed – and the evidence is against it. Who said this? Not creationists, but a new member of the National Academy of Sciences in his inaugural paper for the academy’s Proceedings.1 W. Ford Doolittle and Eric...

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know...the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints... Ephesians 1:18b Two things strike me about this portion: saints and inheritance. First, if you are a Believer you’re a saint. You don’t need special Vatican blessings or pronouncements. The word saint means "consecrated to God, holy" (Acts 9:13; Acts 9:32; Acts 26:10; Philippians 4:21; Romans 16:2; Ephesians 4:12; Ephesians 5:3, to name a few instances of the word in the New Testament). It’s not only a term but a way of life, consecrated,...

Portland, Maine - An adult adoption involving lesbian partners and a claim to a share of a family fortune built on IBM has been annulled, bouncing the case to Maine's highest court. At issue is whether it was legal for a judge to allow Olive Watson to adopt Patricia Spado in 1991 in Knox County, where the longtime partners spent several weeks each summer on an island in Penobscot Bay. Watson was a daughter of Thomas Watson Jnr, who took International Business Machines Corp from punch cards into electronic computing. The relationship between Spado and Watson ended a year after...

I have a friend whose wife has Altzheimers. She's fortunate because hers is not the mean type. She smiles all the time and giggles a lot. But she's in a nursing home. He also has bad health and had to go to the same nursing home. I almost choked when he told me it was costing them $9000 a month for the two of them. He had to move out and move in with one of his children. She's still in the nursing home. What on earth can he do? Do they have any options?

Over the next 50 years, it's expected that $45 trillion will be transferred to heirs and charities via estates - the largest wealth transfer in history. How much of it is siphoned by trustees or lost to estate taxes, administrative fees, lawyers' fees, appraiser fees, accountants' fees or poor investment acumen surely will be a record, as well. Estate planning, in particular trusts and their administration by financial institutions, can be mind-numbingly complex. Talk of them turns on the unpleasant subject of death. But unless consumers remain vigilant - and technology is employed for checks and balances - assets will...

WASHINGTON - The House voted Thursday to cut taxes on inherited estates and relieve thousands of heirs from paying tax collectors beginning next decade. The 269-156 vote, just a few months before an election with control of Congress at stake, saw majority Republicans temporarily setting aside their ambition to abolish the tax. Instead, they voted to exempt from taxation individual estates up to $5 million and couple's estates up to $10 million, while also blunting the impact on even richer families. The compromise measure now goes to the Senate. The White House called the bill "a step in the right...

It doesn't matter if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There is no possible excuse for doing what Congress is poised to do this week: Abolish the estate tax. The federal government faces a future of expanding deficits. Thanks to the baby bust and medical inflation, spending is projected to rise by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2030, a growth equivalent to the doubling of today's Medicare program. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take a source of revenue and abolish it outright. -snip- People often remark on the perversity of popular support...

Vanguard of the Revolution http://www.theVanguard.orgD-DAY FOR THE DEATH TAX by Rod D. Martin, 31 August 2005 Tuesday is D-Day. The Senate votes on whether to do what the House has long since done: end the Death Tax, the most obscene tax in America. And we may -- just may -- have the votes to win. Since its enactment in 1916, the Death Tax has actually cost more jobs and destroyed more small businesses and family farms than it’s raised in government revenue. That’s no accident. Death Tax proponents never meant their handiwork to raise real money: the levy was, from...

WALNUT CREEK - A mysterious little key, found tucked away in a dusty desk drawer, remains as confounding today as it was 13 years ago when Terry Ann Black found it. But while Black never learned what the key opened, she has used it to unlock a door and assist others in sorting out the estates of departed loved ones. Black, a Lafayette resident who has worked 40 years as a nurse, is the author of ``Caring Is Not Enough: The Most Important Questions You Can Ask,'' a self-published booklet that contains more than 70 questions everyone should answer. The...

...A recent study by... found that over 20 years the Joint Committee on Taxation] has always underestimated the revenues from tax hikes, while overestimating the revenues that are lost when taxes are cut.... The Joint Tax calculations of the "cost" of death tax repeal have been particularly wild and inexplicable. In 2001, JCT famously estimated that repeal would cost the Treasury $600 billion over 10 years -- twice as much as the death tax actually raises. The Joint Tax whiz kids built into their computer models the behavioral effects of lawyers working the interplay between the death and gift tax...

The audience was eager for the governor to put pen to paper. Some drooled. Catching the spirit of excitement, a few even lost control and barked. Canines of all sizes and a spotted rabbit named Roxy were among those gathered Friday at the Capitol to watch Gov. Linda Lingle sign into law a measure that allows residents to leave a trust for the care of their dog, cat, or other domestic animal. ADVERTISEMENT Lingle's two cats, Nani Girl and Stripes, were not in attendance. "As you know cats don't do as well in public settings like this as dogs do,"...

The clock is ticking. Unless Congress acts -- who knows? -- we could see a wave of suicides, patricides, matricides and rich-uncle killings in 2010. That's the year that the federal tax on estates -- also known as the "death tax," the most hated tax exacted by the U.S. Treasury -- will be repealed. If you die in 2010, you can pass along all your assets to your heirs without a penny to Uncle Sam. But the repeal recedes. If you die after 2010, only $1 million of your estate is exempt from tax, and the rest gets hit with...

Social Insecurity... cartoon by FReeper IPWGOP (aka Linda Eddy) click here for really large versionThis is an email-able, copyright-ready graphic you can use in emails, on blogs, in flyers, on posters... anything that's noncommercial. Three great lies about Social Security Editorial by: Roger Wm. Hughes There are three great lies about Social Security that are taken as truths. The first great lie is that those who are currently receiving Social Security benefits are just drawing their own money out of the system. This is not true because the Social Security System has always been a pay-as-you-go system. The first retirees who...

A CAT which inherited £450,000 has been moved to a secret safe house after a series of death threats. Tinker was given a £350,000 three-bedroom house and £100,000 when widow Margaret Layne died aged 89 last year. But now neighbours Eugene and Ann Wheatley, trustees of his fortune, have moved the moggy from Harrow, North London. Mr Wheatley, 77, said: "He is safe now in a place in mid-Wales but I dare not say where exactly. "After the news of Tinker's inheritance we got hundreds of calls from people jealous of his money. It was horrible." Tinker had been a...

I have received a letter from Pat Cohen Esquire, Christian and US citizen notifying me that I am a beneficiary of $750,000 from Strom Thurmond's estate because of all the good deeds I've done (apparently not anonymously enough). It is being held in Wellington House in Cambridge by FX International ROYAL AND SCOTTISH GROUP. (RSG Fiduciaries or the RSG Fiduciary Bank in London. I am waiting instructions for how to transfer the funds, but I think I'd rather just pick them up in person. It says I may be released the money by any means I desire.

AP-A federal appeals court Thursday threw out a judge's ruling that awarded $88.5 million to former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith from the estate of her late husband, an oil tycoon who died at age 90 just over a year after they wed.

Last year, singer Melissa Etheridge promised to love and protect her new partner, actress Tammy Lynn Michaels, until death do them part, but she may not be able to leave her songs to Michaels. U.S. copyright law discriminates against homosexuals by not allowing songwriters and other artists to determine conclusively who gets the rights to their work at the time of their death. No matter what an artist's intention, spouses, children and grandchildren, in that order, are the first in line to recapture the copyrights, followed by next of kin, executors and administrators. Since most states do not recognize gay...

WASHINGTON - Sen. John Kerry, whose wife is enormously wealthy, inherited three trusts from his mother last year, according to a financial disclosure report released Friday. After the death of his mother, Rosemary Forbes Kerry, last November, the Massachusetts Democrat inherited three trusts with between $300,000 and $1.5 million in assets. The holdings include between $66,000 and $165,000 in U.S. Treasury bonds as well as thousands of dollars in stocks, ranging from General Electric Co. and Merck & Co. to 3M Co. and Proctor & Gamble. Rosemary Kerry, who was 89 when she died, was a member of Boston's wealthy...

The grandson of J R R Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings books, has spoken for the first time of the family feud that has seen him excluded from managing the writer's literary estate. In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph today, Simon Tolkien speaks about the five-year dispute and how his father, Christopher, has turned his back on him and his children. He also discloses how a minor disagreement over the Hollywood adaptations of the books contributed to his exclusion from the board of the family firm. He said: "My father is very angry with me...

Kevin Phillips's new book, "Wealth and Democracy," is a 422-page doorstopper, but much of the book's message is contained in one stunning table. That table, in the middle of a chapter titled "Millennial Plutographics," reports the compensation of America's 10 most highly paid C.E.O.'s in 1981, 1988 and 2000. In 1981 those captains of industry were paid an average of $3.5 million, which seemed like a lot at the time. By 1988 the average had soared to $19.3 million, which seemed outrageous. But by 2000 the average annual pay of the top 10 was $154 million. It's true that wages...

Would the posting police, in advance, give me a break for this vanity. I've been around here long enough to know how things work, but I simply could not get the response posting under general that I may get here.